Nice write-up! I plan to point recruiters and other non-technical people who bump up against some of this to this page for a better explanation than I provide "off the cuff" each time someone stumbles over a term. Thanks for "elevating the discussion". :-D

http://ensode.net/roller/dheffelfinger/entry/why_is_it_so_hard#comment-1382600713206Re: Why is it so hard to find Java talent?David R. Heffelfinger2013-10-24T07:45:13+00:002013-10-24T07:45:13+00:00

@Patrick Not for senior positions, I hope. However, my point is that many companies make it hard on themselves to find good talent.

http://ensode.net/roller/dheffelfinger/entry/why_is_it_so_hard#comment-1382557385403Re: Why is it so hard to find Java talent?Patrick Carroll2013-10-23T19:43:05+00:002013-10-23T19:43:05+00:00

I do a lot of phone screening and face-to-face interviewing for my company. I am regularly presented with blank looks when I ask an interviewee to write a method that accepts a list of integers, iterates over the list to sum up the values in the list, and returns the result.

http://ensode.net/roller/dheffelfinger/entry/why_is_it_so_hard#comment-1382455172579Re: Why is it so hard to find Java talent?Ewald2013-10-22T15:19:32+00:002013-10-22T15:19:32+00:00

@David - You just made my "I feel sorry for you" list! What's interesting is that on many of these legacy projects, performance is a big issue! Yet, there's no drive to update to a more modern code base and better libraries, instead, companies insist that I find a way to improve their system without upgrading the technology stack.